Here cooomes the Crimson Chin!

Just without the spandex costume (which I now regret missing out on).

The sad part is I’m only exaggerating a little. I’ve developed some kind of mouth infection that I’ve had once before and never expected to get again, but this time it was much worse. It got so bad that my chin, lower mouth and cheeks started to swell up, and at its worst it even went into my neck. My mom got pretty worried — and so did I — so I ended up going to the hospital to get it checked out since my GP’s office wasn’t open until the next day. The doctor there was rather perplexed and suggested I see my dentist to get an X-ray, but before I left he very kindly instructed a nurse to stab me with a knife.

And by that I mean inject a litre of poison into my flesh as brutally as possible.

And by that I really mean give me a needle with a lot of antibiotic fluid into my hip. I’ve never had a needle there before and all I can say is ow.

I take good care of my teeth so it’s a bit baffling, though I know I grind my teeth in my sleep and I hear that’s bad for the gums. Regardless, I’ll be off to the dentist after Christmas to stop this from happening again. The antibiotic medication (a prescription of pills, thank god) I’ve been taking has done wonders and I’m almost all better. I feel more normal and not like I’ve got a watermelon lodged in my chin, and for that I’m thankful. Everyone else is most likely also thankful they can once again understand me when I speak. Though now that she’s certain I’m not going to die my mom is happily making jokes about how I’ve had a face and a half for the last week. Thanks, Mom. Love you too.

On another topic, yes, I won NaNoWriMo! Whoooo! And three days early, which turned out to be the best thing I could’ve done since my infection started pretty much the day after I won. It hurt so bad for the first few days I could barely focus on mindless video games, much less write. I finished off at 50,404 words and a heck of a lot of novel left to write. I’m taking a bit of a hiatus from writing for the next couple weeks and then I’ll have to sort out my projects. I’m sitting on two unfinished novels after this November and I don’t want them to rot at the bottom of a pile that will inevitably grow and overwhelm me with its incompleteness, and I also want to finally start on serious revision of my first novel. I can’t wait to mold it into a polished state that I can be proud of. It’s my baby.

So, how are the holidays going for everyone? I finished up my Christmas mail and have it all sent on its way, which is a relief. Now I just need to make some simple presents for people close to me and wait for mail to arrive for them and myself. I’m hoping beyond all hope that the sand I’ve ordered for my mom will show up in time! I really love Christmas and getting gifts for everyone makes me so happy, especially when I know they’ll love them.

It looks like my Mijumaru plush won’t get here in time for Christmas and that’s a bit saddening, but I still have my Wii, which arrived on December 1st. I can’t believe how much fun it is, and I can’t stop playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It’s easily one of the most amazing games I’ve ever played. It’s just so wonderful, and beautiful, and incredible. It’s gorgeous and the cutscenes have this intensely epic feeling to them that’s so strong it wells up inside me and it’s hard to sit still, to the point where I sometimes want to cry. (I get really into games and things.) Part of me really hopes the game will never, ever come to an end. I know once I start feeling like the last stretch of it is getting close it’s going to be hard to get myself to continue the story. It’s just so wonderful! I’ve got a lot of history with Zelda games, and if it weren’t for them and my brother I wouldn’t be as into gaming as I am now, so this game really means a lot to me. I just wish my brother lived closer so I could share the experience with him. He’d love it as much as I do. Mario Kart is also tons of fun and laughs with other people, and Super Mario Galaxy is just incredible. When people say it’s a great game, they aren’t lying. It’s as beautiful as Skyward Sword and gives me that fun feeling all classic Mario games do. And Kirby’s Epic Yarn? Two words: Epically cute. Oh god. I can barely handle it. I love Kirby.

Get it for the hilarious item descriptions (and awesome frogs!) if nothing else.

I’m pretty much out of pointless things to ramble about now, so I will sign off with this last little thing. I found this candy by Meiji in the grocery store the last time I went. Surprised, since our stores never have anything even remotely foreign, and also drawn in by its promises of suspiciously Pocky-esque goodness, I got some. To my delight, the biscuit sticks are complete with Engrish sayings printed on them. Here’s my favourite:

I’m finally used to my glasses now, although I still feel like Geordi La Forge when I put them on for the first time that day, and my nose tingles a bit sometimes. And drinking hot beverages is an unexpected challenge, what with the fog effect and all.

Too bad he looks so much more stylish than me.

I also have to make sure I don’t make too many sudden movements or I lose my balance, but at least now I more or less have proper depth perception. Sometimes they make me feel a little claustrophobic, though. Anyone else ever had that? It just sort of feels like I can’t see properly at points, because of light reflections and whatnot. I’m sure I just need to adjust a little bit more.

So, Christmas is just around the corner! Oh, I see you wincing. I’m sorry I had to bring it up. I was pretty stressed about it before but now I’m really excited, since I’ve more or less got all my gifts figured out and the presents for my international friends are almost ready to be mailed off. For once in my life I actually might, maybe, just maybe, have gifts completely ready earlier than the night before the holiday! I’m quite proud of myself. Now I’m mostly waiting on mail since the majority of things were ordered online. I can’t say what I’ve bought/made for most people I’m gifting since they might see this, but I can say what I have planned for my mom. See, she collects sand from around the world and puts it in nice little jars and decorative containers. I realized there are people from all over the world on the Pokémon Collectors community, so I asked them for sand and they have obliged! My mom’s gonna flip. I plan to put the sand in baggies and label them with where they’re from, then arrange them in a box and draw a postcard-esque card to rest on top. I can’t wait to see her reaction.

I’m also pretty stoked for my own Christmas gifts, haha. I do miss not knowing what exactly I’ll get, but for the gifts that I am getting this year I needed to know in order to plan it properly, and I’m okay with that. The Boyfriend is being absolutely ridiculous and bought me a Wii with Mario Kart, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Super Mario Galaxy. It’s been ordered and should ship this week. I’m really excited, especially for Kirby and Skyward Sword. I <333 Kirby and that game looks adorable beyond belief, and Skyward Sword… let's just say I won't be leaving my room for a while. The last home console I got was a GameCube, so this is pretty awesome. I've wanted a Wii for years.

From my mom I'm getting this:

It took ages for me to figure out where and how to get him for the best price, but with the help of a member of Pokémon Collectors he’s on his way. While The Boyfriend is allowing (and encouraging) my playing with the Wii before Christmas, I won’t get to see my darling Miju until Christmas Day. It’s gonna be so worth it. Actually, the Wii was ordered last Friday and expected to be here by this Friday that just passed, but due to some stock issues it won’t be shipped until next week. I was upset at first — because, holy crap, a freaking Wii — but just yesterday I realized the true disaster that would have befallen me if it had shown up before I finished NaNo. Now I bless this stock issue.

What present are you most excited to give (or receive!) this Christmas? Or what are you hoping to receive, if you don’t know? I need to dig out the Christmas music soon…

45,515 words (and not even at the halfway point. I’m beginning to think all fantasy books, by nature, are just plain LONG)

Because you’re lazy and you don’t have anything to talk about.

… Oh, right.

SO ANYWAY. I’ve decided recently to try and make myself write up a blog post every Friday. Let’s see how this goes, and pretend I haven’t been inactive for months — again.

It’s the middle of November! We know what that means, don’t we? That’s right! NANOWRIMO FUNTIEMS. I was doing fantastic up until a couple of days ago when I took a break, and now I’m losing my lead. I’m still at 32k words and the goal for today is only 30,006 so I’m not behind, but being ahead is so much more motivating. I’ve been trying to push myself to write today but lately I’ve been even more easily distracted than usual, and that’s pretty crazy considering how easily distracted I am to begin with. It’s weird, actually, because I love my story and writing it isn’t difficult, exactly… I just don’t know. For some reason, it’s not interesting to write. I think my story is interesting, but writing it isn’t. I suppose I just need to pick up the pace and make it more entertaining. I know my outline is fairly blah in the part that I’m at, so I’m probably going to hurry the story along to the fun bits and then rehaul the start of this rough draft during revision. Boring is bad!

For those interested, I have a synopsis and small excerpt of my novel over here.

In other news, as I mentioned in my last post with its Pokemonness, I’ve gotten really into Pokémon collecting lately, à la the Pokémon Collectors LiveJournal community. I’ve never really had a serious collection before so this experience has been really fun! There’s something really satisfying about seeing the collection grow and grow, and it makes me happy to look at it on my shelves. I’ll try to post a photo next time; WordPress is just too blinding for me to get too into details tonight. In the meantime, I’ve put together a collection site, so you can check that out here if you’re feeling curious:

I say WordPress is blinding because it’s pure white and my eyes are not fond of that, but they’re even more bugged than usual because of the strain on them this week. I’ve known for a while now that I needed glasses, but I finally got to see the optometrist this last Wednesday. My first ever time going, and it was… unpleasant. After having them drop stinging liquid into my eyeballs and then staring at them with all kinds of different machines and blinding me with direct light the optometrist determined very quickly that I, indeed, needed glasses. Picking out frames was fun and I got a nice pair, but I have to admit the prospect of getting them worried me some. It’s going to take a lot of getting used to. Thankfully I mostly just need them for distances so in the house I can basically keep them off. I felt so sick after the examination, though, and I’m feeling fairly sick again today after wearing the glasses off and on. I thought the only thing I had to get used to was having frames on my face! I had no idea about the dizziness/depth perception/fish-eye lens things that go on. This is going to be an interesting week. If I get through it without fainting and/or vomiting I will consider myself successful.

Do you have glasses? Care to share any tips on getting used to them, or taking care of them? Or perhaps just some interesting/anecdotal stories? My mom told me about how she woke up numerous times in the night, attempting to take her glasses off, only to realize she had already taken them off before going to sleep, as well as getting into the shower with her glasses still on. I’m dreading what might happen to me! My worst fear at the moment is breaking them somehow… gah.

See you next Friday!

32,692 words

Third time participant, third time winner. The feeling never gets old. After the exhilarating rush of entering my 50,249 words and basking in the heartwarming winner’s page, I cried. I love writing. I love NaNoWriMo. So much.

So yeah, here I am, late to the party again! There’s just been so much going on with me lately and I’ve been trying to use my spare time to work on finishing my Camp novel. Sorry, guys! To make up for it, here’s a rather lengthy post with picture spam! (Though this could also be a bad thing…)

I have a few topics to cover here, but I’m going to go in non-chronological order and start with my birthday! \o/ In summary: I had two birthdays and they were awesome.

On my actual birthday, the 26th of August, I got to go to a lakeside cabin my brother was staying at for the week. I swam in pretty water…

…and had tasty food (my first time eating freshly caught fish; for a self-proclaimed country girl I’m rather sheltered)…

…and got bit by bugs (no photo necessary), and saw the resident otter. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get a picture of the otter because he disappeared for the rest of the day when he saw me coming toward him with a camera. But I also saw a bear, and I got a picture of that!

It was my second time seeing a wild bear, and it never gets old, especially considering this time I was actually outside of a moving vehicle and saw it lumbering around doing its thing. Bears are just gorgeous. Seeing that really made my day extra awesome.

When I got home I spent some time winding down from the long day, and I spent some time with the present my mom got me!

That’s right. You’re totes jealous of my giant shiny Politoed. <3 My mom paid for him to be commissioned from a custom Pokémon plush artist. I love that she even put a bow on him. Isn't he gorgeous? I still haven't settled on a name for him, but I'm leaning towards "Sweets." He's got the biggest, most cutest feets ever. I love wiggling his bubbly toes.

A few days later I had my "second birthday," which was scheduled for The Boyfriend's day off since he had to work while I swam in a lake (ohoho). My aunt came over and we had cake and I opened the rest of my goodies, which were all Pokémon, because I'm awesome.

That’s right. Look at those cuties. Stare at that Stunky and tell me it isn’t super adorable. I dare you. And my Chubbysaur! I’m so glad I got the Applause Bulbasaur plush. It’s sooo cute, and so fat, haha. I love him. <3 I've been really active on the Pokémon Collectors LiveJournal community these days, so all of them were purchased from community members (by The Boyfriend, except for Shiny Bigtoed!). A couple of them were sweethearts and added notes in the packages. :D I’ve really wanted that Stunky plush for a while now and I love him to pieces. He’s really, really adorable. I recently made him a pair of glasses out of pipe cleaners and have named him Shakespeare. He’s an awesome literature-loving Pokeskunk.

My aunt also got me this amazing baby. My first flat screen monitor (or whatever you call it). I’ve actually been pining for one of these for a long time now, and especially since I got a new TV that is MASSIVE and takes up a lot of my desk space. Having this really gives me a lot more room! My mom called me out to see it and I was totally speechless. My aunt said, “Happy birthday and congratulations on winning!” and I just about burst into tears. It really feels nice to have people acknowledging that NaNoWriMo isn’t a silly, pointless thing. I like stickers on my monitors, and unfortunately this one doesn’t have much room around the screen for them, but I managed to squeeze some on there from my old monitor. The bow on top of it is also from my old monitor, which was also a birthday present. I love the bow. XD

As for the rest of the day, I spent it all with The Boyfriend. We played games and watched Eclipse just for the lulz. I love watching the Twilight movies with him because he’s so hilarious throughout them all. He hates them, of course, but he thinks very highly of Charlie’s cool factor and narrates his thoughts and speech every time he’s in a scene with a deep, gravelly voice. With this movie we both got more into that, and he branched out to narrate other characters as well when things were too boring, and I joined in this time. By the time the movie was over I really had no idea what happened overall because we spent too much time laughing and using silly voices to say ridiculous things. It was a really fun day. I’m also proud to say I ate absolutely nothing but pizza and cake the entire day. I do not regret a thing. ;Db

Since it’s kind of related, I’d like to take this moment to show you the Politoed plush that I made for myself a few months back!

She’s certainly not as polished as Sweets, but I think she came out really nice, aside from her funny feet. (I couldn’t figure out how to do them… I didn’t realize until very recently that I needed to use another panel to create the bottom of the feet, sigh.) Regardless, I think she’s pretty and special. Her name is Minty, named so after her minty green colouration. :3

Hey, since we’re here, let’s look at this nice picture of some books:

Whoa… wait a sec. There’s something strange about one of those books. I wonder what it is?

Wow! Would you look at that! It’s my book! Silly me. ;D Hehe. I realized I haven’t had a chance to show off this beauty yet. I had Circumstance printed just before the CreateSpace deadline. I had a ton of fun working with the covers and ended up needing some votes on which picture to use since I had two great choices, but in the end this one won out. I really love it. Seeing your story in print, even if it’s not officially published, is still a really great feeling.

On one of the first pages I had to include the cover Cardon Webb designed for the book back in November, because, come on — I got picked for 30 Covers 30 Days and a real cover designer DESIGNED ME A COVER! (No, I will never get over this. ;o;) Camp NaNoWriMo didn’t get sponsored by CreateSpace, which is okay, but it means I don’t get a free proof copy of my Camp novel. (I’d call it by name but I keep changing it, pff.) I’m going to end up buying a proof copy anyway, though, since it doesn’t cost that much and hey, why not? And yes, my nails are cool.

Speaking of cool nails…

YEAH. I KNOW THAT LOOKS FREAKIN’ COOL. BE JEALOUS. 8DDD I discovered this technique a couple days ago called water marbling and I’ve been addicted. I did a somewhat messy test run the day I found out about it, but I cleaned that off and did a proper attempt with better colours today. It looks like it should be really difficult, but it’s actually very easy, just a little time-consuming. For any interested, this YouTube video taught me how to do it. It’s really mindblowing to watch! The results are just amazing.

And with that, dear readers, I am finally done this post. You may cheer now. I’ll try to come back again soon. XD Thanks for reading, and I hope there wasn’t too much picture spam for you!

Long time no post. Again. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. A lot of things have come up recently — real life, personal drama, plus plain and simple forgetfulness, to name a few — but nobody really wants to hear more of my usual excuses. I will, however, tell you the primary cause of my absence, for it is relevant to this blog post.

Camp NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo? In the summer? Oohh! Aahh!

Cool, right? Any fellow WriMos understand my disappearance now. (Or… not.) I know it’s a really belated mention of the event, considering it’s already the 22nd and it ends on the 31st, but hey, I’ve been busy participating.

While I have done something for both months it’s run (July and August), I knew from personal experience that two months in a row of such highly intensive writing would be too exhausting. Maybe not impossible, but certainly incredibly difficult. With more practice — and more ideas — I could probably do it and still have what sanity anyone who participates in NaNoWriMo has remain intact, but right now it would be more than I can take on. Nonetheless, I didn’t want to miss out on the very first Camp NaNoWriMo! So I took the suggestion The Boyfriend gave me: cut the words in half and write an easy story in July to warm up with. Perfect. I set my goal to a loose 25k, and began work on an old fanfiction I abandoned about five years ago.

I finished off the month with a little over 20k and three and a half chapters of pretty decent writing. The experience taught me a lot, like editing while simultaneously trying to meet a word count in a short time frame is hard, and once you unleash your inner editor it’s hard to shove him/her back into their chained box! It was kind of fun to go over my writing and edit it purely for punctuation and word fluidity again, though. I had to do that because I was posting the chapters up on the Internet as I went along. It felt good to go back to a kind of “easier” writing that I haven’t touched in years, but it also really showed me how much I’ve changed and grown. Comparing the chapters that I had to rewrite to what the story originally looked like in 2006 was really great for my self-esteem, in a couple of different ways. For one, it made me feel good about my improvements, but for another, it made me realize that all of my old writing isn’t as vomit-worthy as I kept telling myself. I actually kept a surprising amount of text from the first chapter (second, if you count the prologue) because it was written well enough in my eyes. That kind of thing makes me feel good because one of my worries has always been, what do you do after your book’s published and you go back to read it a few years later and think it’s total garbage? You are always growing and learning as a writer, which is what made me worry about how I would feel about any published stories years after their publication date, but now I see that if you’re happy with your writing once, that doesn’t go away. Some passages will probably irk you, but just like an artist who draws, you’re probably going to be the only one who sees that line that should be a little thicker or that word that should be substituted for another one. You are your own greatest critic, after all.

Another great thing about it was getting feedback for my story. Everyone who goes into writing should post something online at some point. There’s no greater motivator than receiving positive reviews. Especially if you get a consistent reviewer or two, people who keep coming back for more. Everyone needs that boost at some point, and it’s so amazing to look back on when you’re in a rut.

For August I’ve gone all out, following the usual November NaNo rules: 50,000 words in — well, 31 days, rather than 30. Lots of people have been blessing that extra day, and I’m amongst them. My story this month is one I’ve had for about three or four years now, a guilty pleasure novel that’s full of werewolves and boys kissing other boys. It’s been very fun, even though I’ve been behind all month. Unexpectedly, Taynin has become one of my favourite characters I’ve ever created. He’s just so much fun to write, possibly due to the fact that he’s a bit of a spaz. You can see the story synopsis, as well as my profile and my ongoing stats here.

I miss blogging. I’ve got a lot to say yet, but I should probably leave that to another entry. I need to get caught up on 4,000 words! See you next time. :D

P.S. For anyone who’s had trouble with my formatting tutorial in the post below this one, I intend to rewrite it a bit and make it a lot more user friendly soon. I just need to get through with Camp NaNo first.

P.P.S. It’s my birthday on Friday! Woo!

I made this after learning some formatting techniques in OpenOffice that I found quite difficult to figure out. I didn’t want to forget, so I actually made screenshots for myself — and then thought, hey, maybe they could help someone else, too!

This was made with NaNoWriMo winners in mind, even though it is cutting it close to the free code deadline, but I thought this would be a cleaner place to post it instead of cluttering up an already busy thread on their forums. Again, it’s a bit late, but maybe there’s an OpenOffice user who’s procrastinated? ;) I do apologize for the length! I tried to make it as concise as possible, but it’s not a really quick thing to do.

Let’s get started!

So, obviously, you’ll need to open your OpenOffice document. Make sure all of your chapters and everything you want to be in your book is in this one file. If you didn’t already know, you can click on the top of each page that begins a new chapter and hold down Ctrl and then press Enter. This will ensure every new chapter begins on its own brand new page. I also recommend saving a backup copy of your document before you begin formatting too much, just in case something happens that you can’t figure out and you need to start over. It just saves you from putting all of your chapters together (unless you use a single document to start with) and sizing them again.

Excuse the oddly coloured documents in my screenshots. I hope they’re not too dark! It’s just that I use a dark Windows XP theme for the sake of my eyes and conserving energy, and I use a dark teal coloured text that I find easy on the eyes and readable on both black and white backgrounds.

1. The first thing you’re going to do is make your pages fit the size of your book. To do this, go to Format > Page… (Screenshot 1) A box will now pop up, seen here: Screenshot 2

Modify the settings marked in blue boxes. You want to make the width and height the trim size you’ve chosen on CreateSpace for your final novel size, and you want to make the margins the size they recommend for your page count. I believe they recommend a minimum .50″ outer/top/bottom margin for any trim size, but .25″ is acceptable. The inner margin depends on how many pages your book is, which they explain on their info page about trim sizes.

My chosen trim size is 5.25″ x 8″ so I edited the settings accordingly, making my margins .50″ just to be on the safe side. (I believe I chose the same setting last year but I can’t recall and won’t know for sure until I’m holding this year’s proof.) My book also went over 150 pages but had less than 400, so my inner margin size was .75″. Finally, make sure you change the “Page layout” setting to Mirrored, as shown. This will make all of your pages’ margins mirrored so they don’t all end up looking like left-side pages only.

2. Take a look at this: Screenshot 3 and note the blue box at the bottom of the screen. Click on the icon it’s surrounding; if you can’t see the image, it looks like two pages with flattened top corners on opposing sides. This makes OO display your document just like a book would look. Your first page, which will be on the right side after you open the front cover of your book after it’s printed, will be at the top all by itself. The page below it, on the left, is the back side of the first page. The page on the right after that is the second page of your book, and so on. This view is very helpful when formatting for printing!

3. Here comes the tricky parts. I hope I can explain it well enough to be understood by everyone. This is to make headers and footers that will display the page numbers and the fancy text at the top of novels that says the author name on the left-hand page and the current chapter’s title on the right-hand page. If you don’t want these things, then you’re already done formatting! Congratulations! If you do, carry on. :)

Screenshot 4
Go to Format > Styles and Formatting, as it shows. Another box will pop up.

Screenshot 5
It’s important that you take note of the blue box surrounding the fourth image from the left at the top of this new box that’s come up. These are the settings for your pages, appropriately called Page Styles. Your list will look very different from mine because I’ve already filled it up with custom styles for my novel. Right click on anything in this new box and click on New…

Screenshot 6
Another box comes up. You’ll start on the Organizer tab, where you want to name your new style in the Name area. What we’re going to do first is make “blank” styles for the first few pages of your novel, so that those pages won’t display page numbers or header text, like a real professional novel. ;) (If your book will have no “blank” pages at the start and jumps right in at chapter 1, you won’t really have need for these, except perhaps the numbered footer.) This part can be a bit of a pain because you’ll need to make a blank style for every blank page you have. I had 8, so I had to make 8 blank styles, which I helpfully named “Blank 1,” “Blank 2,” etc. (as seen in my page styles box). All you really need to do is name these, then click OK, right click any space in the Styles and Formatting box, go to New again, name your second blank style (Screenshot 7) and so on.

Once you’re done creating all of your “blank styles” you need to right click on your first Blank again. (Screenshot 8) Go to Modify… this time. Still in the Organizer tab, this time look below the Name box, to “Next Style.” Click the drop down tab and choose your second blank, hopefully named something differentiating, like “Blank 2.” (Screenshot 9) You’ll need to do this for every blank style, except for your last blank page (number 8 for me). Forget about the last blank style for now, but remember it for later.

4. Next is to make two styles for every chapter you have. This is a fairly lengthy, tedious process, but I don’t know of an easier way at this point. Go ahead and make two more styles, this time hopefully named something chapter-related so you can tell them apart, and I think it’s a must to name them “left” and “right.”

What you’ll want to do once you’ve gotten both styles for your first chapter created is to make sure they lead into each other like your previous blank styles. As seen here: Screenshot 10 make sure your first chapter 1 style leads into the second chapter 1 style. IMPORTANT: Only make ONE of these lead into the other! My first chapter starts as a right-hand page, so my “Chapter 1 Header Right” style goes FIRST. That means I modify my Chapter 1 Header Right style to lead into my Chapter 1 Header Left style. The Left style will afterward lead into your chapter 2 styles, but these aren’t created yet so leave the Next Style menu at the default. This is important to keep note of, and could ruin your formatting if you don’t pay attention.

The next important thing to do is make sure both your chapter 1 styles have headers and footers. Your blank styles stayed, well, blank, but this is where we want our page numbers and headers to begin. See here: Screenshot 11 Instead of the Organizer tab, click on Header and tick the outlined box that says “Header on.” Next, click the Footer tab and tick “Footer on.” Do this for both of your chapter 1 styles.

At this point you should go back to your final “blank style” and make sure its “next style” is your first chapter style (which, for me, is Chapter 1 Header Right).

5. Now we’re going to apply these styles. If you click anywhere on the very first page of your document and double-click your first “blank” style in the Styles and Formatting box, it should automatically apply all of the necessary blank styles. If you made sure that your final blank style’s next style was your first chapter style, the rest will go smoothly.

Make sure to click on the very top of the page on your first chapter. Now go to Insert > Manual Break… (Screenshot 12) and select your first chapter style from the drop-down menu (Screenshot 13). Click OK.

The next thing that should happen is OO will create a blank page, pushing your first chapter down a page. Click on that new blank page and press Backspace on your keyboard. (Screenshot 14) It will delete that unnecessary blank page — but look! Now your chapter has a header and a footer!

Something important to note is that most published novels I’ve seen don’t include a header on pages that start a new chapter. To do this for your novel, modify your first chapter style and untick “Header on” in the Header tab, which will effectively remove that header. You will need to create a third style for every chapter if you choose to do this, and apply it to the third page of your chapter so it will continue keeping the header for the rest of the left or right pages. I did this for my own novel, but not until after I’d formatted everything, which gave me a lot more work than truly necessary. :P For the sake of this tutorial I left the header on that particular page for ease. (And… because I didn’t think about it until after, hah.)

Click on that new header and type in what you want it to say (usually the chapter title, if it’s the right side)! (Screenshot 15)

Scroll down to your second page and type in the left header what else you want it to say (usually the author name, if it’s on the left side). (Screenshot 16) Notice how all of your right pages suddenly have that chapter title for a header, and all of the left pages suddenly have your name for a header? :) (If you modified your first chapter style to not include a header you will have to click on the next blank page and type the header in there, which will proceed to change the rest of your document.)

(Notice from here on out I’ve blurred my chapter text in the screenshots to save myself some dignity, haha. NaNoNovels, gotta love ‘em.)

6. Next you’ll need to repeat step 4 for every chapter you have. I forgot to screenshot this next immediate part, but hopefully that’s alright. You have to remember to modify each chapter style so that “Chapter 2 Header Right” (or Left, if the last page of chapter 1 ended up on the right) leads into “Chapter 2 Header Left” (or Right, again, depending). For the sake of less confusion we’ll use my document as an example and say chapter 2 starts on the right. That means you want to make Chapter 2 Header Left lead into your Chapter 3 Right style and so on. This must be done for every chapter you have in order to keep the headers and footers separate for each chapter, so make sure Chapter 3 styles lead into Chapter 4 as well, and so on all the way through to the end. If this is too confusing feel free to ask me for clearer help; it’s difficult to explain.

Once you’re at Chapter 2, we need to apply the new styles again! Remember, it’s Insert > Manual Break… (Screenshot 17) and then select the appropriate style from the drop-down menu (Screenshot 18) and click OK. Just like before, it’ll create that blank page that you want to click on and then press Backspace (Screenshot 19).

Fill in your new right-hand header (Screenshot 20) and then your new left-hand header (Screenshot 21).

7. Finally, it’s time for the footers! This part is a lot easier to do. As seen here: Screenshot 22 all you have to do is click on the footer at the start of each chapter (as well as the page after it — and the page after that one as well, if you’ve opted to have an extra style with no header on each chapter) and go to Insert > Fields > Page Number. You’ll immediately see your pages numbered (Screenshot 23). If you had blank pages at the start of your document that you applied blank styles to, OO will still count them in the page number — but not show them, because footers are disabled! Just like real novels. :D

The very last thing to do is click on the next unnumbered page you see and do the very same thing, going to Insert > Fields > Page Number (Screenshot 24) and then watching it number it for you (Screenshot 25).

Something that might be worth noting is you can fully customize the font size and style of your headers and footers, just like any other text.

I hope this was helpful to someone! Sorry if it gets confusing. It is a fairly confusing process, but if you take your time with figuring things out it shouldn’t be too hard to get a hang of. Again, feel free to ask me questions and I’ll do my very best to explain things in a clearer manner for you.

There are several things I could talk about today, but none of them are really very interesting at all. My recent crafting is the most interesting of the lot, so I’ll just stick to that. :)

There is a cute little Pokémon called Cleffa. This is what it looks like:

All Pokémon have a shiny version. This is Cleffa’s:

There is a method of breeding shiny Pokémon. You put two of them in the daycare and make sure one of the parents is from a foreign language game, and you have a higher chance than normal of hatching a shiny baby. Now, it’s still not a high chance, but it does make things easier. I decided to try this method again in Pokémon White, after not trying it since Pokémon Sapphire, and not stop until I finally got my shiny. Lucky me, I got my shiny in my 206th egg! I love her to pieces and she is my first shiny I’ve ever encountered without RNG methods.

I decided to commemorate her birth by making her come to life.

With some TOMY figures for size comparison.

She doesn’t… look perfect. She looked pretty close to perfect before I stuffed her, but I guess the pull on the fabric between her ears made her head too flat. As a novice seamstress I still have a lot to learn. But oh well, she’s still cuddly!

Have some more pictures because I take too many.

Top view for the headfluff.

Back view. My favourite part of the plush is her curly tail!

With a Pikachu buddy.

A cute shot of her with my DS, where her virtual counterpart resides.

This is a work in progress shot, before I stuffed her. You can see how nice her shape is. I’m really not sure how to fix the shape issue. :/

And finally, a shot including my next work in progress:

My next sewing project, which I honestly hope turns out a little more accurate shape-wise than Cleffa did, is going to be my favourite Pokémon ever, Politoed! \o/

I’ve been planning another Let’s Talk Frogs, which I was going to have up today but — well, long story short, I think I accidentally disabled my DVD-ROM drive in my computer’s bios, and I can’t do this next Let’s Talk Frogs without some of my own photographs. Hopefully I’ll get it figured out tomorrow, but honestly I’m scared of fiddling in the bios again because my computer is very finicky and the reason I was in the bios in the first place was because it wouldn’t boot up. Le sigh.

So today’s entry is telling you… to… look forward to… the next entry? XD

I also had to feed my frogs centipedes today. Not Cool. (I know, owner of frogs who doesn’t like bugs… :/)

See you tomorrow!

I didn’t have many chocolate chips, but there are some in there!

I used a slightly modified version of this recipe, as per the suggestions in the comments.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter (room temp.)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs (room temp.)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
- Preheat over to 350°F (175°C)
- In large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in vanilla and eggs, one at a time. Combine flour, baking soda and salt, then stir into sugar mixture. Mix in chocolate chips. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes

Now, I did a slight experiment with these. I baked about half the dough at the time of making it, then covered the rest and put it in the fridge for 24 hours. I’ve heard absolute rave things about how letting the dough sit for 24 hours makes it so much more awesome, and also helps prevent your cookies from flattening and spreading. I did notice a distinct taste difference, but I’m not sure if it’s a good difference, exactly — and, quite obviously, the cookies still spread (the cookie from the 24-hour dough is on the lower left). These cookies came out a little bland to me, even sitting in the fridge, so I’ll have to try another chocolate chip cookie recipe in the future. I also seem to constantly underbake my cookies. :/ I’m too afraid of burning them.

Do you have any awesome chocolate chip cookie recipes? Or perhaps tips to keep cookies from flattening out?

See you tomorrow!

If you didn’t already know, this is the Cadbury Creme Egg. I would tell you if this is the new Canadian wrapper or if this is possibly the UK variety, but my wrapper is long gone now and I don’t want to dig through my garbage just to be able to tell you guys that. Go buy your own.

Anyway, I learned something today. I already knew that in 2007 Cadbury was outed about making their American variety Creme Eggs smaller than their UK counterparts, but I didn’t much care because I’m Canadian and our eggs were (more or less, from what I know) still the same size as the UK ones.

American egg on the left, Canadian egg on the right

Then I got a Creme Egg this year. They’re American sized now! (Though apparently they re-sized in 2010, but I didn’t encounter one until this year.) There’s nothing I can really do about it so I was prepared to just accept the fate of our Creme Eggs — but then I ate it.

Now, I could be wrong… but I think they taste different, too; possibly just like the American ones. This bothers me greatly. The chocolate tastes distinctly different — a little more milky, maybe? — and the fondant… Well, I can’t remember what was different about the fondant because I was determined to enjoy it as much as I could, but I know there was a difference. It is definitely not as delicious as I remember it being. And I remember it being very delicious.

I am extremely disappoint. UK, I thought you loved us. :’(

See you tomorrow.